Sunday, July 11, 2010

Summer Reading

Our 6yo learned to read this past year in kindergarten. For him, and everyone else, it is important to continue to read regularly to keep up one's reading skills. Unfortunately, my son doesn't like to read and only really shows interest in playing video games. I've tried a lot of strategies but I've only found two that have worked.

1. Allow him to pick out books about Star Wars, superheros, and video games (despite the poor quality of the books themselves).

2. For every minute of reading he does each day, he gets to play a minute of video games (e.g. 20mins of reading=20mins of gaming). This has been pretty successful thus far. He has timer that counts up the time he is reading and then can count down as he plays games. (and the 4yo has caught on too!)

If you have any other tips on how to get non-readers to want to read, let me know!

3 comments:

I was adverse to reading for years. It wasn't until my grandmother introduced me to: 1) The Boxcar Children, 2) My Side of the Mountain, 3) Robinson Crusoe (for kids), and then 4) the Hardy Boys that I got interested. I craved adventure, and these books helped. They lead to The Dragonlance Chronicles and Fantasy, which lead to Science Fiction. The important thing was that I was never pushed, and never punished for not reading. Only encouraged.

WF has an Usborne book called "Illustrated classics for boys" (I think that is the name), that has several books in it that he really enjoys. It is knights and pirates and all kinds of things little boys enjoy.

We've struggled for 2 years with his stance against reading and it hasn't been until recently, when he found books he enjoyed, that he could read, has it not been a fight every time. Now he reads Diary of a Wimpy kid, Boxcar Children, A-Z Mysteries (and the others from that author), etc.

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